


All the Long Night Through

by merriman



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Holidays, Storytelling, fabric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28125510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Longnight is when all the fires are doused and no light remains. That's still a problem for Sandry, but thankfully her family knows how to help.
Relationships: Trisana Chandler & Daja Kisubo & Briar Moss & Sandrilene fa Toren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	All the Long Night Through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laughing_Phoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laughing_Phoenix/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I liked the idea of doing something with the four celebrating a holiday, which led me to Longnight, which led me to Sandry's fear of the dark.

The gifts had all been given and the feast had been eaten and now, together, Briar, Sandry, Daja, and Tris doused all the fires in the house on Cheeseman Street. Even Daja's forge was cold. At last, as the sun went down early in the evening, the four sat down in the formerly warm and cozy sitting room, huddling together and drawing blankets up over themselves in the growing darkness.

"Good thing you got those tapestries over the windows, Daj," Briar said, glancing over at the covered window nearby. The shutters had been latched shut earlier in the day and a heavy tapestry hung in front of it now.

"Who do you think made them?" Daja asked, nudging Sandry. "Beautiful work, like I told you. They'll keep the warmth in until morning when we light the fire again."

"I should have spent a little more time on them," Sandry murmured, looking at the nearest one by the light of her stone night light. True, she didn't really need the night light to see the tapestry. Even in the dark, she could see it, the magic she'd put into it visible as glowing strands if she really looked. She'd started on them when they'd returned from Namorn, needing something to occupy her while she worked through the whole horrible ordeal they'd been through. Weaving a tapestry took time and patience and planning. Not that these were terribly complex - No elaborate pictures telling stories on these, just simple weavings with patterns to hold spells for warmth and protection. Still, they were an accomplishment she was proud of, and that they brought some comfort in this home made her happy.

"Nonsense," Tris said, shifting to face Sandry in the dark. "We hardly saw you for a month while you got them started. Even with magic, tapestries take time."

"I know," Sandry said, staring at the tapestry, letting the light of the magic keep fear at bay. With the fires doused for the night, it was pitch black in the house. In all the houses. When they'd lived at Winding Circle, she had volunteered to spend Longnight in the Hub, helping the dedicates who tended the flame that burned always in the room under the tower. Moving back in with her uncle in Summersea, there had been parties to see to, with various jobs to do and responsibilities to distract her. Her night light was but a small token against the night when no fires burned, not even candles. Now there was only the dark and her foster siblings.

"They make the most amazing tapestries in Kugisko," Daja said, breaking the dark silence. "I didn't have much time to watch them, but I saw them in some of the houses. It gets so dark there because they're so far north, so they have these brightly colored tapestries inside. They said it keeps them cheerful all winter long."

Sandry closed her eyes and suddenly she could see the tapestries. Daja was imagining them and letting her see them in her mind. They were vivid images of sunlight and greenery, playful scenes of children and animals as well as more fantastical pictures of mages producing wonderful swirls of light. And as she examined the tapestries Daja was showing her, Sandry could feel the warmth of House Bancanor around her, the happiness Daja had felt at being a part of this family, even in the face of the terrible things that had happened just before Longnight. 

Just the thought of the fires made Sandry frown and she almost lost the picture Daja was showing her, but Daja blew the fires away like they were nothing but smoke. 

_This isn't about that,_ Daja told her. _This was a healing, a time to rest and come together and remember how important we were to one another. Some day, maybe the Bancanors will visit and you can meet them. I think you'd like the whole family._

Sandry smiled, her eyes still closed. _Perhaps some day I'll be able to return to Namorn. Not the capital, obviously, but Kugisko is a distance away…_ It was unlikely, given how they'd left Namorn and the Empress. Even if they traveled inconspicuously, Empress Berenene had her ways of spotting people. Kugisko wasn't nearly far enough away from the capital of Dancruan to evade her notice. Still, with Daja's memories of the place, she could see it just by asking.

"I told you once about penchi silk in Yanjing," Briar said, picking up where Daja trailed off. "But I didn't get to tell you about the lotus silk, did I?"

"Lotus silk?" Sandry asked. "I thought the silkworms had to eat a certain leaf."

"They do," Briar told her. "This isn't silk made from worms. It's from the lotus flower itself."

"How is that even possible?" Sandry asked, curiosity fired now as she thought about everything she knew of silk and how it was made. 

Into her mind, Briar showed her an image of people harvesting threads from lotus stems, carefully cutting them open and pulling them apart to stretch the threads inside, rolling them together as they went to form a strand. Sandry watched this memory of Briar's transfixed by the process, by the delicacy and care.

 _The threads are so fine, they break easily,_ Briar told her. "You've got to spin them in the same day you harvest them or they turn brittle and fall apart. But the silk is so much softer than regular silk. It takes forever to make even a small square of it, and it costs a fortune. I meant to get you some, but then the war… He sighed out loud and Sandry reached out to give his hand a squeeze. He'd been doing so much better since starting to see one of Winding Circle's healers for his memories of the war. 

Briar squeezed Sandry's hand back, then sent her another image, one of the finished silk, so soft, so fine. _Some day,_ he told her. _Some day, we'll meet someone who's managed to buy some and you can see it for yourself._

 _Maybe if we can get some lotus flowers to grow here, we can try to make some,_ Tris suggested. _Might have to ask Crane to use the greenhouse though._

All four of them laughed then. The greenhouse had been expanded in their absences and now had a whole section devoted to plants that needed to live in water to thrive. As far as they knew, Crane had no lotus plants, but perhaps he could be persuaded. 

"Just tell him Rosethorn's building a pond for them behind Discipline," Daja suggested. "He'll do it in a heartbeat. You know the two of them."

"They'd both do it, just for the challenge," Briar pointed out. "Then we'd have twice the lotuses. We'll talk about it later, Sandry."

Sandry nodded, already thinking about how she would use thread like that, what she would be able to do with it magically. She would weave protection with it, or perhaps use it to screen out disease or smoke. 

"I never saw any interesting fabrics in my travels," Tris said into the silence that grew while Sandry contemplated lotus silk and the tapestry one could make from it. "But back before my family started passing me around, I remember going into one of the storehouses one of my uncles managed."

Tris rarely, if ever, spoke of the Chandlers as family. She had long ago told her foster-siblings that if the Chandlers didn't want her, she didn't want them. But she still used her last name. And she could still name every adult in the family and what goods they specialized in. Sandry put aside her thoughts of weaving and listened.

"Uncle Bertel. He wasn't bad, as my uncles went. He usually had sweets in his pockets he'd give to us kids, and he'd have us help with inventory, but he made it into a game. Some game. We were free labor for him." There was a trace of bitterness there, but only a trace.

"I visited him three times. Once when my mother was ill and they wanted me out of the house. Once when my cousin Ora was having a baby and they needed an extra pair of hands. And once before he died, when my father went to pick up some goods we didn't trust to couriers. That second time, Uncle Bertel had a shipment of wool from somewhere far to the south. He said it was made from just the fur combed off the bellies of baby rabbits. I thought he was lying to me, but it was so soft. The softest thing I'd ever felt. Do you know if it's real?"

Sandry was surprised by the question. Tris made it her business to learn what she wanted on her own. Anywhere she went, the first thing she looked for was a library she could settle into. 

The sensation of smoothing fingers over impossibly soft woven wool filled Sandry's mind and from that alone, she knew that what Tris's uncle had told her was likely true.

"I've heard of that sort of thing," she told Tris. "It's difficult to get your hands on it. Why didn't you mention it before?"

"I thought maybe Uncle Bertel would take me in once," Tris sighed. "But he died just before my parents started handing me off to relatives. He died in his warehouse, inventorying his goods. Wool included. I never got to ask him what it was called."

Sandry locked the memory of the wool's texture into her own mind from Tris's memory of it. She'd find it. She knew she would. Perhaps Lark would know.

Laying her head on Daja's shoulder, Sandry let the thoughts of these fabrics, these things she'd never touched for herself but knew nonetheless, wrap around her like a blanket. 

"Sun's coming up," Briar murmured after a short while. "The trees always know."

Daja got up and went to pull back the tapestry and open the shutters. Sure enough, there was a faint glow over the horizon and a few homes nearby had smoke coming out of their chimneys already. Sandry watched from her seat on the cushions on the floor, then got up to stand with her. Soon, Briar and Tris joined them. 

"We should light the fire," Sandry said. "Welcome the new dawn. Thank you, all of you."

 _Of course_ said three voices in her head. _What else is family for?_

**Author's Note:**

> Lotus silk is a real thing, mostly made in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam. The process Briar describes is a quick summary, but you can find videos online. There's a decent one here: https://www.businessinsider.com/lotus-silk-most-expensive-fabrics-in-the-world-vietnam-2020-11 with a full transcript underneath the video player.


End file.
